This Tornado Loves You, Neko

When sifting through the millions of songs we’re barraged with in any given day, week, month, year, there are plenty that are worthless wastes of time. There are some that deserve loathing. There are inoffensive others, enjoyable many, and likable some. And no matter your background or criteria, there are a few that you love. But if you are a songwriter, there is a select catalog of songs that you wish you had written. Not songs that are band opuses, beasts of arrangement and democracy. I’m talking about compositions broken down to their essentials, things perhaps bolstered by great arrangements but not necessarily so. In my little collection of songs that I wish I had written, there are two acts that continually raise the bar I set my songwriting toward, continually develop perfect compositions of depth, beauty, and catchiness. The first of those has just released a new album, and the first song on that album is perhaps for me the newest epitome of this class of song.

Neko Case’s “This Tornado Loves You” exemplifies so many of the ideals I maintain that it’s left me fairly incapable of processing the rest of the album (although the first single, “People Gotta Lot Of Nerve” is actually another in this class…and, honestly, the rest of the album hasn’t grabbed me anywhere near these two). Without sacrificing hooks or pop accessibility, it’s a sprawling, wandering composition with more bridges than verses and choruses (or at least multiple verses and choruses) but that never strays from a few carefully picked chords. A continuous reordering of these chords creates a masterpiece that is as familiar as it is evolving, and with the two out-of-key chords sprinkled in for good measure, we are tossed from the evolving familiarity briefly and frequently by disturbing moments of unsettling shift. Her lyrics specialize the techniques to brilliant, poetic effect. As a tornado having power over everything but her love, she sings the compositional sway exactly as you would imagine a massive funnel barreling forward, swinging unexpectedly, calming, roaring, destructive, revelatory. Just take her first verse for evidence. “My love, I am the speed of sound. I left them motherless, fatherless, their souls dangling inside out of their mouths. But it’s never enough. I want you.” It is beauty explored in the macabre, or, as goes a phrase in a subsequent song–a phrase as descriptive of her music as it is of her subject matter–”the Sistine Chapel painted with a Gatling gun.”

I think this song is pure genius refined and replicated for the masses. And how lucky to have it. But I gush too much. Without further ado, make up your own mind. Hopefully I haven’t ruined it for you.

Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You

And here are three others from the Neko Case songbook that I hold near-equally dear.

Neko Case – People Got A Lotta Nerve
Neko Case – Margaret Vs. Pauline
Neko Case – Star Witness

Enjoy.